DISCOVERER/CORONA:
FIRST U.S. RECONNAISSANCE SATELLITE

In
early 1958, a few months after the Soviets launched the first Sputnik,
President Eisenhower authorized a top-priority reconnaissance satellite
project jointly managed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
and the U.S. Air Force. It was to launch into orbit a camera-carrying
spacecraft that would take photographs of the Soviet Union and return
the film to Earth.

The
secret spy satellite was dubbed Corona by the CIA. To disguise its
true purpose, it was given the cover name Discoverer and described
as a scientific research program.

From
1960 to 1972, more than 100 Corona missions took over 800,000 photographs.
As cameras and imaging techniques improved, Corona and other high-resolution
reconnaissance satellites provided increasingly detailed information
to U.S. intelligence analysts.

All
photographs here are courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency and
the National Reconnaissance Office, unless otherwise noted.

DISCOVERER
13: FIRST SUCCESS

After
a series of failures, the 13th Discoverer/Corona mission was successful.
A satellite was launched and a return capsule was retrieved from
orbit for the first time in August 1960. A week later, Discoverer-14
carried a camera into orbit and returned a capsule containing the
first U.S. photographs of Soviet territory taken from space.

FIRST
SPY PHOTO OF THE U.S.S.R. FROM SPACE

The
first photograph of a Soviet military site taken from a spacecraft
shows a Siberian air base at Mys Shmidta near the Chukchi Sea. It
reveals objects about 12 meters (40 feet) across, as seen from an
altitude of more than 160 kilometers (100 miles). Film retrieved
from Discoverer-14 covered more Soviet territory than all the earlier
U-2 aircraft flights combined.